


Vivid

by levitatethis



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-17
Updated: 2010-05-17
Packaged: 2017-10-09 12:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levitatethis/pseuds/levitatethis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four conversations between Mohinder and Sylar</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vivid

_We are none of us alone.   
Even as we exhale it is inhaled by others.   
The light that shines upon me shines upon my neighbour as well.   
In this way everything is connected to everything else.   
In this way I am connected to my friend even as I am connected to my enemy.   
In this way there is no difference between me and my friend.   
In this way there is no difference between me and my enemy.   
We are none of us alone.   
_ **-Life, _Farthingale_**

“Did you really believe you were going to bring The Company down?”

Sylar’s voice rips through the silence as it ricochets off the walls of the apartment.

Mohinder, lost in self-destructive thoughts with his eyes glazed over in front of his laptop, blinks back to life and looks up. He brings both hands to his face and rubs the torturous daydream remnants from his eyes.

His voice tired, but still trying to sound sure, Mohinder says, “It was a good plan.”

“You were a pawn, Mohinder. Bennet used you, like he used me,” Sylar firmly states. “The context may have been different, but don’t fool yourself. You were no more than a good little expendable soldier.”

Mohinder leans back in his chair. Taking a contemplative breath he says, “You don’t understand. What we were doing was so much larger than you could even begin to wrap your brain around. And then things changed along the way – the virus became so much more and Bennet just…lost his way briefly.”

“Do you even hear what you’re saying? You’re twisting yourself around to justify all these little gray possibilities,” Sylar’s accusing voice attacks.

“Justifying what?” Mohinder’s exasperated voice reaches across the room as tears fill his eyes. “I shot him! I put a bullet in his head! I made a choice and I don’t know if it was the right one. I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.”

“You’ve crossed your own line,” says Sylar’s pointed voice. “The same line you so valiantly used as your moral compass. And now you’re in bed with an organization you know deep down inside is corrupt and brutal. You’re no better than the rest of us.”

Mohinder thinks over the accusation hurled at him.

“Maybe I’ve removed my rose coloured glasses,” Mohinder eventually counters dejectedly. “_You _did that to me, Sylar.”

“And you’re welcome for that,” Sylar affirms.

As Mohinder crosses his arms along his chest and scoffs, Sylar continues.

“_I’m _the one who opened your eyes to the real world around you. It’s because of _me_ that you can even begin to contemplate the complexities of every situation you find yourself in. The lesson has just taken a while to sink in.”

“I was broken and you _fixed_ me is what you’re saying?” Mohinder asks sarcastically.

Silence fills the air leaving Mohinder’s question hanging in the balance. After a moment Mohinder asks the question again, but this time there is less force behind it as if he is actually seeking the answer.

“I was broken and you fixed me?”

“Yes,” is Sylar’s one word response.

The answer drives itself into Mohinder’s brain repeatedly, like a jackhammer. The non-stop pounding tries to convince Mohinder of its truth. But Mohinder is not that far gone, at least not yet.

“Bullshit,” Mohinder’s defiant voice takes a stand. “I’m worse off now than before. I’ll fix myself. You’re screwed in the head. Everything from your mouth was a lie. Everything.”

“No, not everything,” Sylar says quietly.

The simplicity of the answer causes Mohinder to twist his mouth together as if trying to forcibly keep unedited words from crossing out into the open. Finally he allows himself to speak.

“I want you to leave.”

“For tonight or permanently?” asks Sylar curiously.

Mohinder thinks carefully before responding.

“Tonight.”

 

********** ********** ********** ********** **********

 

Tension hangs thick in the air.

Instead of feeling stifling, however, it invigorates as it sparks electric. Two pairs of calculating eyes meet across the table.

With a teasing smile Mohinder says, “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls. For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”

“Stop,” Sylar orders with laughter in his voice. “You’re trying to distract me.”

“I have no idea what you are alluding to,” Mohinder responds as he tries not to laugh out loud.

“Right,” Sylar says as he leans back towards the table, crossing his arms along the surface and directing his gaze back at the chessboard situated between them. “You know that was my favourite passage from that Gibran book you quoted--,”

“_The Prophet_,” Mohinder interrupts.

“Yeah, _The Prophet_. You quoted almost the entire thing when we traveled together,” Sylar finishes off while keeping his eyes on the chessboard.

“I was not sure you were listening,” Mohinder muses watching Sylar’s careful contemplation.

“Of course I was. I liked what you had to say,” comes Sylar’s distracted response. He slowly raises his right hand towards the board, still unsure of the move he wants to make.

“Really?” asks Mohinder sarcastically.

His hand still hovering over the board, Sylar glances up at Mohinder.

“No,” Sylar states. “I put up with your incessant talking because it kept you from actually asking me anything about myself. You were your own worst enemy. All I had to do was sit back and let your naivety do the work.”

Mohinder breaks their look, consciously directing his eyes around the apartment away from Sylar.

“I’m still repeating the same mistakes,” Mohinder sighs.

“You’re feeling sorry for yourself,” Sylar’s voice cuts deep. “It’s pathetic. Maybe Chandra was right, you are…_fragile_.”

Mohinder’s eyes shoot back towards Sylar who is now sitting back in his chair, a look of taunting amusement animating his face. He has made his move and now it is Mohinder’s turn.

“Now who’s the one trying to distract?” Mohinder asks, agitation in his voice. “I seem to recall shooting a bullet at your head.”

‘Too late though,” Sylar smirks.

“Still, I did it,” Mohinder reiterates, his eyes now focusing on the checkered squares below.

“So what do you want? A congratulations?” Sylar baits him. “_Congratulations_, you figured me out. _Congratulations_, you shot at me; too little, too late. In the end _you_ couldn’t stop me. You need to move on or you’re going to drive yourself mad.”

Minutes tick by marking the dragging pace of time. Mohinder stares at the chessboard, his mind torn between the next move both on the board and in the conversation.

“You’re still in the game, Mohinder. There are always counter moves, a million viable possibilities; the tide can turn at any instant, but you have to keep playing,” Sylar’s voice orders.

It is a strange sentiment coming from him and unexpectedly Mohinder opens up.

“I still feel like such a failure in his eyes,” Mohinder quietly admits knowing that Sylar understands he is referring to Chandra.

As the confession comes forward, Mohinder glances up from the board. Sylar, who has been watching the board as well, looks up and their eyes connect.

“We’re all failures in our parents eyes, never living up to their expectations,” Sylar begins. “But isn’t that the point of the passage you quoted? Parents can only guide so far but in the end their children are their own people with their own paths to follow – paths our parents are not part of.”

“And your path was as a murderer,” Mohinder states.

“At least I used my gift. I’m the next leap forward. I--,” Sylar begins to defend himself.

“Stop trying to justify what you’ve done!” Mohinder quickly asserts.

“I’m not trying to justify anything. You are,” Sylar points out.

“No I’m not,” Mohinder replies, but there is now a catch in his voice revealing his uncertainty.

“Then why are we having this conversation?” Sylar asks simply, but the connotation hits Mohinder full force.

In a futile attempt to ignore Sylar’s question, Mohinder directs all his focus to the chessboard. With deliberate thought he moves his rook.

“Check,” Mohinder says but there is no smile on his face.

He looks up to find Sylar watching him intently. Sylar’s eyes seem suddenly dark and foreboding. When he speaks a chill scrapes along Mohinder’s skin.

“Maybe you’re thinking you should have trusted Bennet? Or maybe you’re thinking about this changing virus that’s spreading like an epidemic? Maybe you’re thinking that as sickening as the murders I committed were, I was actually doing humanity a favour. Maybe I was the physical embodiment of natural selection, removing a potentially dangerous threat from the world, stopping it from crossing over into the general population. You’re thinking maybe I was necessary to keep the scales balanced and now it’s too late.”

Mohinder’s frightened eyes lower themselves to the chessboard. Try as he might he cannot ignore the truth at the core of Sylar’s diatribe.

“Maybe you’re thinking I wasn’t so repulsive after all,” Sylar finishes.

Mohinder brings his gaze down towards his own hands. He looks at the lines and healed over scars that mark him.

He is so lost in thought that he almost does not hear when Sylar speaks again.

“When you part from your friend, you grieve not; for that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.”

Mohinder looks up in surprise. Sylar is leaning forward against the table.

“Checkmate,” Sylar says confidently.

Mohinder’s eyes go to the chessboard. A queen stands in place of his rook.

His king has nowhere to go.

 

********** ********** ********** ********** **********

 

In the middle of another restless night, maybe 2:00am or 3:00am, Mohinder lies awake, his eyes looking at nothing on the ceiling above. It is a night like so many others for him. He sits up in the bed and shifts backwards so that his back now rests against the headboard, his eyes still running along the ceiling.

“You miss me,” Sylar states, no question in his tone.

Mohinder’s eyes drift down from the ceiling to the side of the bed away from him. Sylar sits on the edge, back to Mohinder, feet on the ground. His face is turned to the right, glancing at Mohinder out of the corner of his eye; the light from outside the window outlines his profile.

“No I don’t,” replies Mohinder’s exhausted voice.

Sylar says nothing for a moment.

“If I said I missed you, if I really meant it Mohinder, would it make it easier for you to admit?” Sylar asks.

“No,” is Mohinder’s honest answer. “It still would not make any sense. I don’t know what _this_ is.”

“Don’t you?” asks Sylar, his voice now shows traces of a teasing threat.

“Would it not be easier to _not _have to analyze it? Each time I try to decipher it, to assign a meaning…it doesn’t work,” Mohinder says in an attempt to clarify the thoughts infiltrating his mind.

“You’re the one who keeps bringing it up,” Sylar points out. “I’m here because you want me to help you figure all of this stuff out. So let’s try this, again. I don’t know how many times I have to keep saying this for you to admit it to yourself. You liked our time on the road together when you thought I was Zane. And a lot of the Zane stuff that you liked was really me. Not the awkward, fidgety behaviour, but the conversations and the…familiarity.”

The words circle around Mohinder’s spinning mind.

“It was you…more than Zane wasn’t it? It wasn’t all a charade?” Mohinder asks quietly.

“What do you want me to say, Mohinder? What do you think?”

“I don’t know Sylar! The truth!” Mohinder nearly yells but catches himself before he goes on.

“I guess you’ll never know,” Sylar says with a shake of his head. “Careful. You don’t want to wake the roommates.”

A floorboard creaks in the hallway.

Mohinder freezes, his heart pounding at an indescribable speed. He listens closely as footsteps make their way to the bathroom and the door closes.

“You have to leave,” Mohinder orders.

“Sure thing,” Sylar says slyly. “You know I always come back.”

 

********** ********** ********** ********** **********

 

“I still haven’t read it, but I will as soon as I have some down time,” says Mohinder, standing next to the mini bookcase in his bedroom, referring to the paper print out of Abraham Maslow’s theory _The Peak Experience_. “Ever since you mentioned it, it has been at the back of my mind.”

“You’ll find it interesting,” says Sylar, standing next to him. “You’re the only person I know who could grasp the philosophical theories that meant something to me.”

A knock at the bedroom door causes Mohinder to turn around. As the door slowly opens Matt pokes his head in.

With a curious look in his eyes Matt cautiously asks, “Mohinder…Molly and me were thinking about ordering pizza for dinner. Is that cool with you?”

“Yes. That would be fine Matt,” Mohinder distractedly answers.

Mohinder sees the concern in Matt’s eyes as he tries to read his thoughts. Mohinder has gotten better at thinking statically, so-to-speak, to keep Matt out. With such resistance all Matt can do is directly confront Mohinder about his concerns.

“Are you okay, Mohinder?”

“I’m fine.”

“It’s just that you’ve been talking to yourself a lot lately, more often,” Matt informs him.

Taking a deep breath, followed by a nervous look around the room, Mohinder settles his eyes back on Matt.

Trying to provide a legitimate reason that is still based in some truth, Mohinder says, “You know it helps me sort out my thoughts. It’s the only way I can organize all the chaos.”

Mohinder watches Matt analyze his answer. He is thankful that Matt cannot hear his heart speed up but he cannot say for certain that his suddenly stilted body language will not give him way. There is a temporary sense of relief when he sees Matt’s expression relax.

“Okay. I’ll call in the order,” Matt says, but his eyes momentarily interrogate Mohinder again and he knows that Matt will approach this subject at another time.

Almost the moment the door is closed and Matt’s footsteps fade away, Sylar’s quiet voice says, “Are you ever going to tell him about us?”

“Oh of course,” Mohinder whispers sarcastically. “Why don’t I tell him over dinner that I frequently engage in imaginary conversations with a dead man – the same man who tried to kill him and many others, including my father. He will completely understand…How could I possibly tell him that you’re the one I talk to?!”

“Why is it me?” asks Sylar.

Mohinder brings his left hand up to his face and rubs his eyes in frustration.

“I don’t know,” Mohinder confusedly admits walking over to the bed and sitting on the edge. “I don’t know why it’s not Eden or Mira or Nirshan. Any of them would make sense. But it’s you instead.”

Mohinder raises his right arm, pointing to his head he continues, “Somewhere in here it makes sense but even I cannot verbalize it. It’s like you’re the only one who could understand. It’s crazy.”

“Look who you’re talking to,” Sylar jokes, while standing across from Mohinder, prompting a smile from the sitting man. “If I had survived at Kirby Plaza do you   
think --,”

“I have no idea,” Mohinder cuts the thought off.

Looking over his shoulder at the closed door Mohinder says, “We can talk later.”

Looking back to where Sylar was standing it is now only an empty space.

Mohinder stands up and makes his way towards the door. Placing his right hand on the doorknob, Mohinder wills a half-truth smile to his face; partly happy for the company that Matt and Molly have provided him in the void still far too big to fill, partly miserable for the bitter truth he dares not share with them or anyone else.

Mohinder opens the door and heads towards the kitchen and the sounds of Matt and Molly setting the table for dinner; a carefully practiced smile firmly in place.   
 

**Author's Note:**

> Heroes Slash Awards  
> **Nominated for Best Mohinder/Sylar Fic (PG13)**  
> **Nominated for Best Mohinder Characterization** (twice)
> 
> Mylar Fic Awards  
> **Nominated for Best Use of Dialogue**
> 
> Heroes Faves Summer 2010 Fiction Awards  
> **Nominated for Best Major Characterization (Mohinder) - Vignette - (WINNER)**


End file.
